Organization Culture Overview

"Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Challenge

While the individual components of organization culture can be identified, no one element will accurately describe the culture. Organization culture most simply stated is a set of important understandings (some unstated) that members of a group share in common in their patterns of behavior, speech and use of material objects. It is a set of norms that create powerful precedents for acceptable behavior within the organization. These unwritten "rules of the road" create expectations around acceptable risk, change orientation, creativity and innovation, group versus individual effort, customer orientation, extra effort, and more. Culture is a powerful force and can provide an engine to achieve market success or an anchor pulling the organization toward failure. This is the challenge!